


Magic Lantern Show

by Amythe3lder



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Creative use of magic, Gen, Insomnia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 01:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3363257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amythe3lder/pseuds/Amythe3lder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some nights, Luna couldn’t sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magic Lantern Show

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DysfunctionalDraught](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DysfunctionalDraught/gifts).



> Because my sister asked me for a story. <3 Hope this suits!
> 
> You're walking meadows in my mind  
> making waves across my time  
> "Strange Magic"- Electric Light Orchestra

Some nights, Luna couldn’t sleep. There were those who would argue that Luna spent so much time in a waking dream that it should make no difference, but a body needs rest and hers didn’t get very much.

This bothered her not at all in the warm summertime, and she would wander the hills around the oddly-shaped little house that she shared with her father. If he was working at the press or pouring over reports of Crumple-Horned Snorkack sightings, he would glance up long enough for his eyes to find the charmed charm bracelet on her wrist that would alert him in the event that she stumbled into trouble. She, for her part in this silent communication, would wave and smile and make their secret sign to show that she wasn’t under the influence of wrackspurts and would come home safe. Luna privately thought that her dear father was a bit of a worrywart; nothing too terrible ever happened. Little befell her at all.

During the school year, sleep was a different kind of commodity. Days- and therefore nights- at Hogwarts were divided up and scheduled in rigid lines the way her childhood home had never known. Besides which, if she was going to take in everything her professors had on tap, she really ought to get her head down for a few hours.

The solution came to her one afternoon as she curled up on some soft moss for a quick nap between her History of Magic class and the dinner bell. While Luna found the course fascinating, Professor Binns’ voice always made her sort of drowsy. In this state just before sleep, she had some of her best ideas. She remembered other times she had felt pliable and sleepy, and the strongest memory that came to mind was the week when her father had gone to interview some dragons (that poor translator who forgot the special curtsy!) and she had stayed with her Aunt Arabella. As her aunt did not live in an area conducive to peaceful nighttime strolls, the squib had kindly suggested that she put on the telly and find a nature show as a substitute. Once she had showed Luna how to operate the strange wand that controlled- she was dismayed to discover- only the telly, the young girl found a programme on stars and fell asleep with images of the night sky swirling in her eyes and new knowledge pouring into her ears to take up residence between them. She had woken refreshed and delighted, and had passed the whole week’s evenings in this way.

The charm started off easy enough: she simply taught her books to read themselves to her at a low volume all night. Before the month was out, she had convinced the books to draw pictures of the subject matter on the bed canopy and put a muffle on the space outside her closed bed curtains so as not to disturb anyone else. The books’ artistry improved and before long she was falling asleep to proper dramatizations of whatever had just been described. Luna fiddled with the aural sync just slightly and the pictures lined up with the words. The secret, predictably, got out the morning after she let one of the first-year students kip with her following a rather upsetting nightmare. The beleaguered little girl fell back to sleep almost immediately, and found a more peaceful dreamscape. Upon waking, Luna’s enchanted linens became the worst-kept secret in Ravenclaw Tower. It was all right, until the night that she woke on the floor after being nudged out of her own bed by an older student in braids and twists. That was when she realised that she needed to think bigger.

That weekend, Luna removed the sound baffle, made all of the canopies transparent, turned up the volume, and bewitched the whole ceiling. Her one dorm-mate who needed silence to sleep took a freshly-abandoned bed in another room with no complaint. The bed’s former occupant viewed it as an even trade as she was prone to insomnia. There was a great shuffling of possessions, and Luna’s new role as dorm mother to the sleep-deprived and nocturnally fearful was firmly established.


End file.
